he met yesterday with house speaker john boehner, their first face to face meeting in more than three weeks. today the president will visit a detroit engine factory to rally support from auto workers. the president's meeting with speaker boehner didn't yield a big breakthrough, but the men did manage to agree on one thing, and that is that they will keep their negotiations behind closed doors. the men released this identical statement, saying this afternoon the president and speaker boehner met at the white house to discuss efforts to resolve the fiscal cliff. we're not reading out details of the conversation, but the lines of communication remain open. cnn's dan lothian is at the white house this morning. dan, i guess the fact that the lines of communication are open is a good sign. >> reporter: that's right. it is a good sign. it was just about a week ago that we were reporting about how nothing was going on, not in public and not in private. aides up on the hill, republican aides telling us there were no phone calls, no e-mails, no communication whatsoever. so this is encouraging i